#11 - Playbook: Nick and Armand teach you how to cold call

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Everybody. And welcome to this episode of 30 Minutes, the President's Club. My name is Armand Farokin. I'm here with my co host, Nick Sigelski. Today we have a special episode 10. It is a clinic on everything you would need cold calling. If you're trying to figure out how to hit the phones, you're going to listen to this episode. So, Nick, on that note, why the heck should people listen?

Well, we've broken today into a couple pieces. We're going to talk about each step of the cold call, what you do before the cold call, what you do when somebody actually answers the phone, and how to book the meeting. We'll touch the pieces sort of in between those parts. But today is a complete breakdown of how to use the magic device called the phone. Let's hit it.

And so it begins with the way that you prepare for your calls. And so, Nick, we talk about a lot of the things you need to know before you pick up the phone. What, what should people be doing?

I think a lot of people completely over research their cold calls. Something that we learned on our. One of our early episodes with Joe Caprio was look at the buying triggers, look at the reasons that you might pick up the phone and cold call somebody. And so for me, I look at a couple things I call law firms, and so I look at the type of law they practice, I look at the Persona of the person I'm going to be calling, and I look at the piece of technology that I'd be kicking out for what I'm selling. And so if I know those three things, that pretty much dictates what I'm going to say from a value prop and opener perspective. And so I don't need to do 50 hours of research. There's this misconception that we've got to research, research, research and know every single thing about Armand and his corgi and where he grew up. But that doesn't really matter on a cold call.

Absolutely. And it's all about planning your attack before you attack your plan. So when you pick up the phone, turn off your slack, you turn off your email, you get everything close. It would drive me up the wall when people would schedule these 30 minute dial blitzes with me. Because I would get into the room and by the time I grab my LaCroix, open my laptop, get my outreach cadences teed up, then it would be already 10 minutes into the session and I'd only have 20 minutes to dial. And so 60 minutes, 40 dial tasks locked and loaded, all of your research in one place. So you know your top three buyer triggers for this specific customer are X, Y, and Z. And you can just unload your openers back to back to back.

I like what you're talking about of having all of your tasks queued up. I don't use outreach or sales loft. I just use Salesforce. That's where I'm doing my prospecting. And so what I'll do is, if I have a goal of making 40 cold calls in a certain amount of time, I'll literally open up 40 different tabs for each of the people that I'm going to cold call. And one of the most satisfying feelings is seeing that list of tabs get smaller and smaller and smaller. And so now I've also eliminated that sort of, like, hesitancy to actually open up more people to call, because you know what'll happen? I'll make 10 calls, and then the 10th guy tells you to go screw off, and you're upset. You feel a little dejected, like a kicked puppy, and you're like, I don't want to open up more tabs. I don't want to call more people. So I do it all up front. I just open everything. And I'm like, that's what I've got to make it through today. What do you think about timing for calling, Armand? Do you have, like, a certain time of day you do it?

This is one where I tell people to shut the heck up real quick. Because similar with LinkedIn posting, you can call at 8am in the morning, you can call at 12pm you can call on Mondays, you can call on Fridays. But I can tell you guys, you will make every excuse in the world to not dial every day. And so what I do suggest is not to perfectly time the market, but to make sure that you dial when you know you will dial. And what I mean by that is if you're hot and high energy in the morning like myself, I. I always, the moment I get into the office, I clear the inbox for 30 minutes and I hit those phones. And an hour into the day, if I can get myself two meetings booked, I'm feeling really good of myself. And then I don't have to do it again for the rest of the day.

I've heard it called eat the frog before. The idea that, like, if something on your to do list is, you've got to eat a live frog, if you don't do it right away, it's just gonna, like, sit there on your desk and look slimier. And grosser and more disgusting. And now it's 2pm and you still haven't done it. And, like, that idea is weighing on you for entire day. And so get it out of the way and then move on with your other tasks.

All right, so you're ready to hit the phones. You're chomping at the bits. Hit the phones. You got your dial task locked and loaded. And now before, one more time, before you pick up the phone, there is one thing that will carry throughout the entire cold call. And I promise you, this is the one thing you need to take away today. If there is one thing that you don't screw up, it is not what you are saying, it is how you are saying it. And so it's all about tone. And the first thing that you will drive me up the wall with is you gotta kill your Uptones. And what that sounds like is there are things that immediately make you come off as a telemarketer. And so if I open with, hey, this is Armanda, we're a cap table management software, that little uptick that makes me sound like a little baby, that makes me sound like I don't have a spine. It has nothing to do with being a male or a female. It has to do with the inflection at the end of your words. And so when you open. Open with some authority when you're saying things, when you're pitching or whatever you want to call it, you end on a downtown, right? We work with a number of injuries and portfolio companies, and they use us for xyz. Have you heard our name tossed around? And you sound much more mature. The other thing you got to do is you got to slow the heck down. And when people give you a tough objection, people are going to say, yo, Nick, I'm not interested, or, I'm busy. Get out of here. I'm walking down the hall right now. And the junior reps are always inclined to speed up, but you gotta slow it down. And so you gotta laugh, and you use laughs very intentionally. On the cold call, somebody says, nick, I'm busy. Look, man, shocker. I didn't catch you walking down the hall ready to take a call with me. Can I get 27 seconds to tell you why I'm calling? And then you tell me if this is relevant. Not.

The other thing to add is the enthusiasm piece, where you get a new rep who's, like, fresh out of boot camp, and they're so excited because their product's going to change the world, and they're like, armand, this is Nick Sigelski calling from Sherpa. Like, that's gross and disgusting. Like, just be a normal person when you pick up the phone over enthusiasm is something that I think kills a lot of junior reps. So I got a question for you, because we've got a lot of new reps that listen to this show, and asking somebody to control the words that come out of their mouth and the tone in my mind is really, really hard. So do you recommend that a new rep has, like a script or a structure in front of you when they're making cold calls?

Some people say, never, ever, ever use a script. And then other people say, you've got to use the script. And I'm a little bit in between. So I believe that at the beginning, especially with things that are almost always similar. So, for example, openers and value props, you should have those down to a T so you can focus on the delivery. And so what that means is get your 32nd opener, your 62nd value prop down, and I would be walking in the streets of San Francisco looking ridiculous. But it's not so ridiculous because it's San Francisco, talking to myself with my headset on, saying my opener over and over and over, but just slightly changing the tone. And my SDRs will ask me, like, how do you get those little nuanced pauses and all that stuff? It's because I'm focused on the delivery, not the words that I'm going to say. But then everything else, when you're handling objections, you gotta have a little bit of flow to you. You can't do all of those on a script.

Maybe we can talk about some of those openers and we can talk about the differences in your tone when you're kicking something off.

Why don't we start with this, Nick? What in the world should people not use as a phone opener?

Hey, Armand, this is Nick Sigelski with surepoint. How are you today?

I don't care. You don't care. Nobody cares. You cannot tell me you got 50 dials locked and loaded and you care about the days of each of those 50 individuals. The other one that drives me up the wall is Nick. Did I catch you at a bad time? Nick? Is it ever not a bad time? Is it ever a great time? Have you ever personally gotten like, yes, now is the perfect time for a cold call?

Well, so the issue with both of those is when somebody I don't know calls me and they say something like that, the alarm bells are flashing in my head. First of all, I want to Know who are you? Do I know you? And why the heck are you calling me? And how long is this going to take? Because I've got 47 other things on my to do list. And if you don't answer those questions immediately, no wonder buyers are confrontational. You call them out of the blue, they're in the middle of an important task, and you ask them how they're doing. And I know you don't care how I'm doing. I. I want to know who you are, why you're calling me, and are you going to go away soon? And so my opener answers all of those things immediately. You pick up the phone and you say, this is Armand Farouk. And I immediately say, armand, this is Nick Sigelski with Shortpoint. I know you didn't expect me to call you this morning. Do you mind if I take one minute to tell you why I'm calling and you can let me know if it makes sense for us to speak? And then I shut up. I've answered who I am, where I'm calling from, what is going to happen next. There's no more anxiety about what happens next. And I tell them I'll go away. And you give them control also. So this is one of the cool things about sales, is I can't copy what Arman does because he and I have such different, like, styles and our brains work differently. And so I don't think the opener that I use would ever come out of your mouth the way that it works for me. And so you use something kind of different. You lead with context up front.

Mine is called the heard your name tossed around opener. And the way it happens is you take those buyer triggers in your research, you take the number one buyer trigger and you lead with that in your opener. And then you introduce yourself. And so it might sound something along the lines of, Nick, we work with a number of Andreessen portfolio companies. It's Armand at Carta. Have you heard her name tossed around? And there are a couple of intentional stutters and intentional pauses there that have been rehearsed on the streets of San Francisco. And the general tone behind it is, yo, you're in my network. We share a mutual investor. Have you heard our name tossed around? And Nick, I don't know if you remember this, but when we were co founders at Sup now, that is how I called our first gym ever. And they had no way they could have possibly heard our name tossed around. And so I know you're waiting for the excuse of but they haven't Heard.

Our name tossed around.

Guess what? It doesn't matter. Because if they say yes, you ask, great, what'd you hear? I don't need to re pitch you. I need to understand why you didn't buy the first time. Or if they say no, then you hit with Nick's opener and you say, great, well, can I get 27 seconds to tell you why I'm calling and then you can tell me if this is even moderately relevant for you guys or not?

Well, I really like the idea of what you're doing there, of if they say yes and they give you a little bit of context of what they've heard about you. I've been working my way through Gap selling again, Armand, the Keenan book. And he talks about how the more deeply you can understand where your customer is at mentally, the better you can position your solution, yourself, your business, et cetera. And so what you're doing is you're in a micro interaction there, you're actually getting some context for what they know about you. And then you're able to position yourself a little bit better when you're saying why you're calling.

Exactly one of two things is going to happen when they say yes. The first is they're going to be wrong. The key takeaway here is if you can get past those first 30 to 45 seconds of a cold call, you are in the money. And the way you do that is making somebody feel like they're not in a super salesy cold call, like you're in their network, like you know something about them, like you researched them for a minute. And, and that bleeds through to the value prop. So if you nail the opener, the value prop, the objections are the right to book a meeting. And so let's talk about value. Props, Nick. So you'd structure yours like context, value ask. Can you walk us through what that would be?

What I want to do is address a problem that I think the person I'm calling might have. And so what I'll do is I'll use that opener. I know you didn't expect me to call you. Do you mind? If you give me one minute, they'll say, fine, go ahead. And I'll actually respond to that with the laugh that you talked about, Armand. And look, I'll say something like, thanks, Arman. And when I'm done, you can feel free to tell me to go away because I am the one cold calling you. And I'll pause for a second and then I'll go, armand, the reason I'm calling You is, I've spoken with a number of managing partners of law firms who tell me that they're frustrated with X. And what I insert as X is a challenge that I frequently heard other managing partners of law firms have been dealing with. And so that's usually just a sentence or two. And then I'll say, would you be open to speaking with me when I'm not cold calling you out of the blue? And then I shut up.

That closes. Sick man. And the other thing that I notice is you're using that context upfront before you even talk about any products. And that's what gets people leaning forward, is they're like, okay, you get me, you get my business back to Gap Selling. You understand the problems I'm going through, and then you just say, hey, we make the problem go away.

That was huge for me, that distinction. I used to spend so much time crafting how we could help them solve the problem, and they don't care about that whatsoever. And it's too much to take in on a cold call. When you call somebody out of the blue, they're not expecting to have a conversation in that space. Most of us are selling solutions that solve a part of our customer's world. And the chances that you've called them when they're thinking about that problem or dealing with that problem right there and then are really, really low. And so their minds almost need a second to calibrate onto that problem. And so if you dump too much on them from a context problem value proposition perspective, it's like information overload. And when that happens, they get overwhelmed and they're going to push you away.

And one last spin on the end of the ball for that one is if you really want to make sure that they have that problem. And we talked about the buyer triggers before. Go figure out Nick. You do this by size of law firm, for example, or what system they're on. And so what you do is you take your top three buyer triggers and that becomes your value prop, but reversed in a problem. You might know, for example, that they're on X system. And your value prop opener might sound like, well, typically when I'm talking to managing partners of law firms and they're on X software, it's great for A, B and C, but when you start to have people leaving the firm, that's when it starts to break a little bit. My guess is you've got this stuff taken care of, man. But can we talk about this for five minutes? When it's not a cold call, one Last thing that drives me up the wall that we need to hit on is that you ask for the meeting at the end of your value prop, and so do I. And the reason that makes sense is too many reps try to turn a cold call into a discovery call, and they'll end their value prop saying, well, typically buyers do X, Y, and Z. We solve that. How are you managing your accounting system today? And it's like, dude, I don't know you like that yet. You don't know me yet. And it comes off as super can very, very, very rarely, with the exception of with inbound, right when people are downloading an ebook and it's like, hey, wanted to see if we could help you out with anything there. Like, what'd you think about it? Most of the time you should just ask for the meeting because then they will give you the real objection behind why they're not willing to take the meeting. So we've beaten the value props to death here. And now we got to go into some objections because we've gotten past the first 30 to 45 seconds of the cold call. If you got a real objection at the end of those 45 seconds now is where the cold call actually begins, because you're having a conversation. And let me be abundantly clear that the first objection that we'll talk about is not a real objection, and that is not interested. And what that is is it's a dismissive objection to get off the phone as quickly as possible. It's not a real objection around why they're not interested. So the goal of handling not interested is to buy yourself another 15 seconds to figure out why they're not interested. And that is the goal. And by the way, this is probably one of the toughest objections to handle because they've already got one foot out the door. But if you're going to handle it, you got to use what KD gave us back in episode eight, I believe. And you got to use a little bit of multiple choice with them because you want to make it as easy as possible for them to give you the real objection. And so Nick slams me with I'm not interested. And I'm going to laugh. Look, shocker, man. When I picked up the phone, you weren't immediately interested. Typically when I'm talking to folks, they're doing things on spreadsheets with their attorneys, whatever that might be. And could you at least give me a sense of how you guys are doing this stuff today? And then I'll leave you alone. And then they'll give you the answer of how they're doing this stuff today. And that's the real objection. And so if it's spreadsheets, now I can go back to my typically language, and I say typically when people are on spreadsheets, they tend to have problems with having an accurate set of books. And now I can go into a classic paint funnel or whatever you want to call it. And you should know what those top three or four situations are for your buyers.

I like the idea of you're trying to buy a little bit of time and get just a little bit more information. And I'll say, hey, I can totally respect that. Could you give me a sense of whether this was just bad timing or if it was a different reason? And then I shut up. And so they might tell me, yeah, we're not interested because we literally just switched ERP systems four weeks ago. We're not going to touch this for another two decades. That's valuable information for me to know. They also might say, well, I don't even know who you are, so, okay, well, now I have something I can address. How about this, the great one. Send me an email. Send me an email with some information. Armand.

Yeah, send me an email and call me in six months are very, very similar to me. And so the way you handle them is you use the typically it sounds like language, you use a little bit of mirroring, and then you ask a disarmingly blunt question afterwards. And you gotta be comfortable doing this, guys. You need to be disarmingly blunt. And so somebody says, yo, call me back in six months or send me an email for Send me email. Yeah, happy to do that. It sounds like you have something in mind, right? What would be most helpful, right? It sounds like you have something that you want to see. Or in six months, great. It sounds like you have something happening there. Just so I can put a note so I don't follow up like a clueless salesperson, what should I be calling you about in six months?

Oh, that's nice.

And that's the first question. They'll usually nine times out of ten either say, well, just give me an overview of your services. You know, I'm just busy right now. And now I ask a brutally difficult question. And so I'm going to say, well, I'm happy to send you this email, Nick, but do you mind if I ask you a really tough question? And they'll say, yes. And you say, well, honestly, most of the time when people are telling me to send them an email, or call me in six months. They're honestly just too polite and they just want me to go away. Is that what's happening here? And then you'll get your real answer. The last one that we should talk about, Nick, is you probably get this all the time because you're doing rip and replace. I'm not always doing rip and replace. But you get a competitor, right? I'm on X provider. How do you start to pick apart that? And how can we break that down for the audience in a way that can be carried to any company?

What you are selling is a solution to a problem. And so it doesn't matter if they've got eight pieces of software in place to deal with that problem. If they're still experiencing that problem, they're. They will move towards trying to solve it. So don't let the oh, we use a different competitor objection to deter you. Because if they're feeling pain, they're feeling pain. Use your typically language. Well, typically when I talk to folks that are doing that, they tell me that insert pain. Is that relevant to you? And then shut up. Let them answer.

And so before you go in the kill, here's what you guys got to know is you got to think of the cold call as an hourglass. There is sand constantly pouring out of this hourglass. Every time you're able to handle an objection really well, you get some more sand, and there's a big red circle at the top of the hourglass. And eventually you got to cut this thing off so it doesn't turn into a discovery call. You've got to cut it off when it's hot. And the way it sounds like when you're making the first ask is you use it sounds like language. Right? Or I think this might make sense. And so you, like, say, look, I mean, you told me a couple things about your business, and I really appreciate the time. I think this might make sense to have a moderately more interesting conversation when I'm not cold calling you. Can we talk about this for 5 minutes sometime next week and see if we can help you guys out with this problem? And then, Nick, of course, what you'll get after that is, well, why don't you send me some times? Right? How do I handle that? Should I send them some times?

I'll say, hey, I actually have my calendar open. I don't know if you have yours handy. I don't want to blow up your email. Your inbox with 47 emails with a bunch of different times. Does Thursday at 3 work for you?

And I say, ah, I'm stuck in the Stone Age. I don't have my calendar on me.

Right.

What comes next.

You're going to want to send an invite anyway. And the show rate on this is not going to be as great as if they're like, yep, Thursday at four works for you. But what I'll say is, okay, Armand, here's what I'll do. I'll send you a calendar invite for next Thursday at 3. If that time ends up working, great. If it doesn't end up working, would you mind declining the invite and letting me know a better time that works for us? And what I'll typically try to do is book for the same time that we're talking there. And then, so if it's a Tuesday at 4pm Pacific, I'm going to try to see if I can get that same time Tuesday at 4pm Pacific, because likely they're going to be available then. The other thing you've got to do is even if you've got their email from Zoom Info or it's in Salesforce, confirm with them what the email address is. If they're willing to share that with you, you're going to bump your show rate just a little bit because it's a give forget sort of thing. And you don't end up with these invites that they just delete right away. You're getting them to recommit.

The second thing you do is you create some guilt. And so in that meeting invite, you basically write what you heard and you say, hey, here's the problem that you shared with me. I'm going to bring on an expert from my team to make sure that we can make you feel like we're hearing out your problems. Right. And so you're making it seem like you've invested something into the process. The other thing you're going to do is, is you're going to confirm these meetings two times instead of one. And so instead of just doing the day before, looking forward to our meeting tomorrow, one week before, I'm going to say, hey, Nick, I was thinking about our conversation and you told me you guys were with this folks. I thought it would be helpful if I could share a case study with you over here. And I thought this might be relevant for your business. Or I saw you guys just raised around in the news. Congrats on that. Or you won this customer deal. Congrats on that. I'm going to do a compliment and build goodwill with you. So you feel really bad if you no show with me. And then the day before, I'm going to confirm the meeting.

One thing I want to jump back to, Armand. You talked about the. Hey, I think this might make sense. Or, you know, there could be some fit here. Like the way that you were, like, almost booking the meeting with the close. I think you're going to like this. It's like the disarmingly blunt thing. What I'll say is. Well, look, Armand, what you just told me is you're. You're frustrated with X and Y. I'm a little bit biased because I work for SurePoint. But I do think this is something we could help you with. Would you be open to speaking with me next Thursday at 4 about how we can help you solve that problem?

So, Nick, we've talked through everything in the cold call playbook. And so one thing we haven't talked about is what is the one bad habit that every rep needs to stop doing on the phones to be more successful?

So I think it goes all the way back to the decision you make about who you're going to call you. You might have three buyer Personas. Maybe it's the VP of Sales, the CIO, and the CFO. But if 80% of your meetings are coming through the CIO, stop wasting your time calling everybody else. Yes, those two other Personas might yield meetings, but you're better off using the time that you were spending calling those other Personas to call more CIOs. Two good things happen here. You generate more goodwill by not bothering people you can't help. And you're 8020 ing your time cold calling, it's made a huge difference for me.

All right, everybody. And it's been a playbook on cold calling. So let's do a quick recap. Email 30mpc style. Number one, we talked about preparation. Have all of your research done beforehand. Have all of your dial tasks lined up and knock those out in 60 minutes. We talked about the tone. Kill all the Uptones, slow the heck down when you get an objection with your openers. We talked about, too. Nick's was, hey, can I get 30 seconds to tell you why I'm calling and you tell me if we're a fit. And mine was the heard your name tossed around opener. We talked about the value prop, which is all about leading with typically language and then saying, hey, we're just going to solve this problem for you, not pitching your product. We talked about three major objections. Not interested. Send me an email. Slash, call me in six months. And then competitors in general, you need to get more information and then calibrate your pitch based on what they give you. And then lastly, we talked about going in for the kill. Never, ever, ever leave a meeting or a cold call without having a meeting on the books. If you have to force the invite, force the invite. Nick, how can people help us out here?

The best way to help us out this week is go onto LinkedIn, find Armand's name, find Nick's name, send us a connection request and put something in the message so we know you're not a complete rando. You actually listen to the episode.

Boom. Call it later, guys.